Driving down the main street of Ballymena's Harryville district, you would be forgiven for thinking the residents of the Co Antrim town have been throwing their own private birthday party for the queen mother.
With a dizzying sea of red, white and blue flags and pennants spanning every street and alley, the freshly painted kerb-stones glistening in the same colours, and photographs of the queen displayed in some windows, it would be hard to imagine a more perfect setting for a royal street party.
It is not until you reach the small, modern Catholic Church of Our Lady at the bottom of the road that you realise who the "beneficiaries" of all this overtly displayed patriotism are.
The chapel of Our Lady in Harryville, located in an almost exclusively loyalist neighbourhood, gained notoriety when it was picketed by loyalist protesters angered by a ban on an Orange parade in the nearby village of Dunloy four years ago. For over 20 months Mass-goers had to run a gauntlet of stones, bottles and sectarian abuse every Saturday night until the "protest" fizzled out in 1998.
Ballymena's city fathers hoped the dark days of sectarianism had finally passed when the town was spared the street battles, road-blocks and torched vehicles that marred streets elsewhere in the North during the recent Drumcree-related violence.
But then arsonists attempted to burn down Harryville chapel last Monday night, cutting through the heavy metal security grille and smashing reinforced glass before piling up altar cloths and carpets and setting them alight. Luckily, the fire burnt itself out.
Another arson attack on the Catholic St Patrick's College less than 24 hours later caused severe smoke and water damage to a staff room and corridor.
The Ulster Unionist mayor of Ballymena, Mr James Currie, who was criticised by hardline Protestants for taking a stand against the Harryville picket, says he is both "saddened and angered" by the attacks and likens the arsonists to Nazis, intent on driving out part of the community.
"These are Protestant bully-boys letting local Catholics know: `We are here and we can do this to you'. It smacks of how the whole Nazi movement started in Germany, gradually intimidating people and making them feel they were not welcome in this town."
A local SDLP councillor, Mr Declan O'Loan, agrees. "We thought we had got off lightly this year during the riots, but it looks like some people had to flex their muscles anyway." He points to an almost man-size "red hand of Ulster" painted on the pavement right outside the chapel's gate and explains that council workers were intimidated and told it "just wouldn't be a good idea" when they attempted to remove it.
"I told the council not to bother with it. It's not worth it for their staff to risk their safety and we can just walk over it," says Canon Sean Connolly.
The parochial house at Harryville resembles Fort Knox, with heavy grilles and padlocks on all windows and doors. Despite the security measures, Father Connolly's predecessor, Father Mullan, moved out when the pickets started - it simply was not safe for him to live in the area.
There is no Saturday evening Mass during the tense summer months, as only around 40 parishioners are left in the area and others normally travelling from further afield are not willing to risk the journey.
A huge mural showing the Ulster Defence Association's coat of arms flanked by two red fists and a gunman wearing a balaclava menacingly adorns a gable wall right beside the chapel. "This is a completely new mural, put up only two months ago. In fact, they painted it somewhere else before taking it to Harryville and putting it up right beside the church. Now, I find that very sinister," says Mr Currie.
Several letters in this week's local paper, the Ballymena Times, congratulate local UDA leaders on their "sterling work" in policing last week's "Twelfth" celebrations. The mayor finds such expressions of gratitude ironic at best. "If our forces of law and order had the necessary powers, we wouldn't need paramilitary leaders to keep their troops in check. As it is, they are facing a Mafia which uses `God and Ulster' as an excuse for extortion and racketeering."
The dwindling number of Catholics in an already 80 per cent Protestant town, as well as the recent spate of attacks - only weeks ago, arsonists attempted to burn down St Mary's Primary School on the Larne Road as well as St Joseph's Primary School in nearby Ahoghill - have led to a "real danger" of the four Catholic primary schools being merged into one, according to Mr O'Loan, a teacher in the town. At the other end of town, on the Broughshane Road, it is a different story. Impressive detached villas with discreet alarm systems surrounded by neat, manicured gardens are evidence of the affluence in this predominantly Catholic area.
"There is a newly-found confidence among Catholics in Ballymena. They have contributed a lot in terms of investment and giving employment to people and don't accept that they have to keep their heads down any longer," says Mr O'Loan, one of the town's three SDLP representatives on a council that until 15 years ago was exclusively unionist.
"Middle-class Catholics are a different circle, they are not on the front line," says Mr Currie. "It is those feeling vulnerable on big Protestant estates, who have to be very delicate in their dealings with those around them, that we need to protect."